Official Gmail Blog: Detecting suspicious account activity

I had written long time back about this:
Official Gmail Blog: Detecting suspicious account activity

http://nileshkumar83.blogspot.com/2009/03/gmail-provides-hijack-detection-tool.html

Weak Password recovery mechanism

Sarah Palin's Yahoo mail account was hacked during 2008 presidential election, reason? Phishing,MITM, XSS or Virus/Trojan? No, the correct answer is: using her publicly available information,somebody was able retrieve her password determining the answers for Password reset mechanism.
These things are very abundant in today's websites. Some websites use damn weak password recovery mechanism. Even Password reset question is dead easy to guess like: the city where you born into,what is your pet's name, what's your father's middle name or which is your favorite film.
The last one is damn easy to guess,reason being, you often chat to your friends about your favorite film or list favorite films.
I was surprised to see that Indiatimes web mail is very lenient in employing mechanisms for recovering the forgot password. I am valid user of Indiatimes web mail. After a very long time I unsuccessfully tried to login into my account. Because I had forgot my password, I tried to recover my password after clicking on the "Forgot Password?" link.
The first step was to ask my indiatimes user id. Providing that in the second step will be at "Security Question and Answer" page. I had set my security question as " My favorite film" and answer was quite obvious. Everybody a bit close to me can simply guess that in 1-2 attempts.
I admit that I am responsible for setting such a lenient security question.
But next thing was shocking. When I provided my favorite film's name it straightaway showed my password 'in front of me'. I was shocked to see this. Very generous!
Had anybody before me tried this thing he would have simply got my password!
Even I had already provided my alternate e-mail address but instead of sending the password it showed upfront.
Simply I gain access to somebody's weak security question's answer and that too in just one step!

SSLStrip on Windows whitepaper

I was today just googling my white paper on 'SSLStrip on Windows'. I was surprised that Google was now suggesting 'SSLStrip Windows' as you start typing 'SSLStrip...' It indicates that lot of people are searching for the term. The Google search listed me some results among which few were linking to sites where I had uploaded the document e.g. my blog and scribd.com.
Another result which came up was was linking to www.rmccurdy.com/scriptssslstrip%20in%20windows.pdf which took me by surprise and I was full of mixed feelings. I was happy that somebody has found it useful but at the other hand I was bit sad that he is not mentioning my name anywhere as a reference on his site. I stressed on my memory and recalled that the guy's full name is 'Robert McCurdy'. Actually we have had a lot of communications regarding his doubts over running SSLStrip on windows.

Well Robert, thanks for uploading it to your site.
Now one more location to download the paper :)
www.rmccurdy.com/scriptssslstrip%20in%20windows.pdf
apart from:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17219610/SSLStrip-on-WindowsWhite-Paper

Using an AirPcap device in Windows with Wireshark

Capturing wireless traffic in a Windows environment is unfortunately not as easy as a setting
change. As with most Windows-based software, drivers in Windows are often not open source and do not allow for configuration change into monitor mode. With this in mind, we must use a specialized piece of hardware known as an AirPcap device.

Once you have obtained an AirPcap device you will be required to install the software on the accompanying CD to your analysis computer.

The configurable options include:
• Interface - Select the device you are using for your capture here. Some advanced analysis scenarios may require you to use more than one AirPcap device to sniff simultaneously on multiple channels.

• Blink LED - Clicking this button will make the LED lights on the AirPcap device blink.
This is primarily used to identify the specific adapter you are using if you are using multiple
AirPcap devices.

• Channel - In this field, you select the channel you want AirPcap to listen on.

Extension Channel - This option is only available on 802.11n capable AirPcap devices (AirPcap nX) and allows you to select an extension channel.
• Capture Type - The options are 802.11 Only, 802.11+Radio, and 802.11+PPI. The 802.11 Only option includes the standard

Include 802.11 FCS in Frames - By default, systems strip the last four checksum
bits from wireless packets.

• FCS Filter - This option will allow you to filter out packets based upon whether they have a
valid or invalid FCS.

AirPcap supports decryption of wireless traffic in two modes. Driver mode, configurable from
the AirPcap Control Panel, only supports WEP.
It is recommend that decryption keys be configured using Wireshark mode, which supports WEP, WPA, and WPA2, and is managed from the wireless toolbar inside of Wireshark.
You can enable this toolbar when you have an AirPcap adapter plugged into your analysis computer by opening Wireshark, going to the View dropdown menu, and placing a checkmark next to the Wireless Toolbar option.

You will need to set the Decryption Mode drop-down box to Wireshark, and add your appropriate encryption key by clicking the Decryption Keys button, clicking New, selecting the key type, and entering the key itself.



Analyzing Wireshark dissection of the 802.11 header:

We can immediately determine this by looking at the Type listing under the Frame Control section of the packet.